Umbrella accounts

Some organizations belong to a larger one — a state association, a regional alliance, a parent club. TrailsIQ calls that larger organization an umbrella account, and it can pay for the chapters it looks after so every one of them is on a paid plan without paying separately.

If an umbrella hosts you, two things are true: your plan comes from them, and they can see some things about your trails. This article is about both, and about how to check either at any time.

Finding out where you stand

Open Settings → Umbrella account. It tells you one of three things:

• Nobody is hosting this organization. Nothing about your trails is visible outside your own team, and your plan is your own.
• An umbrella has asked to host you. You can read exactly what they would be able to see, then accept or decline.
• An umbrella is hosting you. It names them, the plan you are on because of them, and what they can see.

The page is always there, whether or not anybody is hosting you. That is deliberate — "can anyone outside our team see our numbers?" is a question you should be able to answer without already knowing the answer.

What an umbrella can see

They can see:

• Totals for your organization — how many miles of trail you look after, how many bridges, gates and signs, and what condition they are in — and the lines of your trails, drawn on one map beside the other chapters' without their names.
• How much maintenance you are getting done over a period you choose, and how much is still open.
• The names of anything in poor or failed condition, which trail it is on and when it was last rated — so they can ask you about it.
• Your team list — who is a member of this organization, what their role is, and whether you have marked them as paid staff, so their hours are counted as crew time rather than volunteer time.
• Approved work hours — who worked, on which day, for how long, and under which category. This is what lets an umbrella account cover insurance for volunteers across its chapters.
• Time your crew logs against a maintenance task — who, which day and how long. It is shown beside the approved hours and counted separately, because a task log has not been through anybody's approval. When a session includes volunteers from outside your team, they see the number of them — never names — and that time counts in your volunteer hours.
• How things stand today — your networks' condition if you publish it on your public pages, how many people your trail counters recorded, how many structures are past their next inspection date, how long your oldest open task has been open, and how many public reports are waiting for you to review.
• Your plan, and whether this organization has been active recently.

They cannot see:

• Your inspection records, including the answers and the photographs.
• Your maintenance items themselves — the descriptions, the notes and the photographs your crew takes.
• What anybody wrote on a work-hours entry or a task log. They see the hours and the category, never the description of the work.
• Time off. Holiday, vacation and sick days are left out of everything an umbrella sees, the entries and the totals alike.
• Work-hours entries nobody has approved. A draft, a submitted entry waiting on review and a rejected one are all invisible to them. (Task time has no approval step of its own, which is why it is counted under its own heading rather than added to the approved total.)
• WHICH task somebody's time went on. They see that a person worked three hours on a Tuesday; they do not see the item, the trail or anything written on it. The same line the maintenance items themselves are on, said again here because a log of hours against work is the one place it would be easy to assume otherwise.
• Which structures are overdue for inspection, or your counter readings by counter, day or hour. They see a count and a total for the organization.
• Your expenses.
• Any ability to change something. They cannot edit, close or delete anything in your organization.

The short version: they see totals, names and approved hours, never the work itself. They can tell that three of your bridges are in poor condition, which three they are, which trail each one is on and when it was last rated. They cannot open the inspections, read what the inspector wrote, or look at the photographs.

And it is read-only in the strongest sense — there is no control anywhere in TrailsIQ that lets an umbrella change, close or delete anything in your organization.

Your team and your hours

This part changed on 24 September 2026, and if you joined before then it changed after you accepted. You were sent a notification saying so.

An umbrella account can now see your team list — who is a member, what role they hold, and whether you have marked them as paid staff on your Team page — and every work-hours entry you have approved: who worked, on which day, for how long, and under which category. They also see time your crew logs against a maintenance task — who, which day and how long — which is shown beside the approved hours in its own column.

The reason is insurance. An umbrella that covers volunteers across its chapters cannot buy that policy without knowing who is covered and when they were working. The people insured are your volunteers, so the benefit of handing the figures over comes back to your organization.

Three limits are worth knowing:

• Only approved work hours. A draft, an entry waiting for review, and one you rejected are all invisible to them. What they see is what you stood behind.
• Paid staff are counted as crew, not volunteers. Mark a member as paid staff in their Edit window on your Team page and their hours from that day on are reported to the umbrella as crew hours, beside the volunteer hours and without the dollar value a volunteer hour carries. Hours they gave before that day stay volunteer hours. Everybody starts as a volunteer.
• Time off is never shared. Holiday, vacation and sick days are left out of everything the umbrella sees, the entries and the totals alike.
• Outside volunteers count as volunteer hours. When a work session includes helpers who are not on your team, the umbrella sees how many there were — never who — and their time is added to your volunteer hours.
• Task time is counted separately until it is approved. Hours logged against a maintenance task land on the person's Work hours as a draft. Until somebody at your organization approves that draft, the time sits under its own heading rather than in the approved total; once it is approved it moves across into the approved hours and leaves the task column, so the same afternoon is never counted twice. Both are shown because an umbrella covering your volunteers is asking how long somebody was out there, and which ledger it landed in is not part of that question.
• Never the description. They see the hours and the category. What somebody wrote about the work — what broke, where, who else was there — stays with you, on a work-hours entry and on a task log alike.
• Expenses are still yours. Nothing about money leaves your organization.

If this is not something you want to share, the answer is to stop being hosted: Settings → Umbrella account → Leave. It is yours to press and they are not asked to approve it.

Accepting an invitation

Only an owner can accept. Joining exposes your organization's totals to another account, which is a bigger decision than changing a trail's condition, so it is not something a manager or a volunteer can do on your behalf.

The invitation shows the full list above before the buttons, not behind a link. Read it, then Accept or Decline. Declining is final for that invitation — they can ask again later, and you will see a fresh one.

If the invitation came by email

An umbrella can invite an organization that is not on TrailsIQ yet, so the first thing you hear about any of this may be an email rather than a page. The email names the account inviting you and carries the same two lists — what they can see and what they cannot — before the button.

Following the link sets your organization up and joins theirs in one go:

• If you have no account, the link takes you to the sign-up form. It asks for your organization's name the way it does for anybody starting out, and the workspace you create there is the one that joins them. Nothing else about setting up changes.
• If you already have an account, sign in and the link shows a short screen asking which of your organizations is joining, or offering to set up a new one. It never picks for you — an organization joining an umbrella is a decision about that organization, not about whichever workspace you happened to be looking at.

The invitation is addressed to one email address, and only that address can answer it. If you are signed in as somebody else the screen says so rather than quietly using the account you are in.

The link is good for three weeks. After that it stops working and the umbrella can send a fresh one.

Everything after that is the same as an invitation answered inside the app: your workspace is yours, your plan becomes the higher of the two, and you can leave whenever you like.

Your plan while you are hosted

Your plan becomes whichever is higher — your own, or the umbrella's. Almost always that means you move up to theirs at no cost to you.

If you were already paying for a higher plan than the umbrella bought, you keep yours. Joining an umbrella never takes a feature away from you.

Three things change your plan back to your own, and all of them are visible on the same Settings page:

• you leave;
• the umbrella stops paying, or their account is suspended;
• they stop hosting you.

In each case you drop to the plan your organization pays for itself, which for most chapters is the free plan. Nothing is deleted when that happens — trails, maintenance, photos and history all stay exactly as they are. What changes is which features are available.

Leaving

Settings → Umbrella account → Leave, and it is yours to press. You do not need the umbrella's permission, and they are not asked to approve it.

The screen tells you what it costs before you press it. If the plan you are on is theirs, it names the one you go back to. If you were already paying for that plan in your own right, it says so — then leaving costs you nothing but their access. Either way it takes effect straight away, and they stop seeing anything about your organization the same moment.

Common gotchas

• The page is the source of truth, not a conversation. If you want to know who can see your numbers today, open Settings → Umbrella account. Somebody's memory of what was agreed two seasons ago is not the same thing.
• Only an owner can accept, decline or leave. If the buttons are not there, you are signed in as a manager or below.
• Being invited is not being hosted. Nothing is visible to them, and your plan does not change, until somebody at your organization accepts.
• An emailed invitation is answered by the address it was sent to. Forwarding it to a colleague does not work — ask the umbrella to send one to them instead.
• Setting up through an invitation link still gives you your own workspace. It is not a shared or a limited account. You get everything a chapter gets, and leaving later takes nothing away from you.
• An umbrella that stops paying stops entitling you that day. The Settings page shows their account as not active, and your plan is your own again.
• You can belong to more than one. A club in two associations can be hosted by both, and the higher of the two plans is the one you get.